Prior to the present invention, alignment of substrates of a multi-station printing machine was tedious and time consuming. Alignment was accomplished by manually rotating several minute threaded devices which changed the location of a printer plate relative to the holder. Simultaneously, a number of instruments indicating the relative positions of the holder and printer plate were observed.
This procedure was repeated for each of the printer plates of the printing machine. Further compounding the difficulty was the need to locate each of the printer plates to positions adequate to provide repeatable image generation on substrates within constraints of the product.
Among the disadvantages to this procedure were: A) Alignment of each printer plate to the same relative position of the first required thirty minutes; B) The instruments that indicate position can be located in an area which has limited accessibility, thus demanding endurance of substantial physical stress by the operator while performing this intricate adjustment; C) The position of each printer plate was sensitive to the rotating action of the lockdown screws during the lockdown process.